I love awards season. The glitz! The glamour! I love watching awkward interviews on the red-carpet pre-show, I love live-tweeting my reactions and I love going through half a box of tissues when Oprah gives acceptance speeches for prestigious lifetime awards.
The Golden Globes annually mark the start of awards season, so you can bet I was parked on the couch last night, crackers and almond butter in one hand and a glass of red wine in the other, ready for takeoff.
But as much as I love the actual awards show, I also love the commercial breaks. They’re like mini Super Bowl ads. So instead of catching up on the best moments of the night (which you can find on literally any entertainment news site this morning), let’s take a moment to catch up on the best ads of the night. Here are the five best ads of the 2018 Golden Globes.
(Not every video is able to be embedded! But have no fear – you can still click each header to watch.)
1) McDonald’s
Remember when I said awards show ads are like mini Superbowl ads? This is a perfect example – and one of the best ads of the night. In the same way brands create sports-themed ads for the big game, this ad was created specifically for awards season.
Any Chrissy Teigen fan knows that she hates never-ending awards shows and loves food. And she even had a McDonald’s-themed baby shower. She’s the perfect spokeswoman for the ad, which hits directly on a niche most likely to watch awards shows (i.e. millennial, female, Chrissy Teigen/celeb fans). And it’s funny. Bravo, Mickey D’s!
2) Volkswagen
Yeah, I know this campaign has been airing for months now (I’m hip to trending ad campaigns!), but it’s still good and it aired during the Globes, so it gets a spot on the list.
First off, this is a great deal. Volkswagen is still working to rebuild trust after its emissions scandal and it’s a long process. A commercial with plenty of nostalgia featuring a song everyone loves and Summer of Love imagery with an old-school VW bus? This is a great way to pique consumer emotions and subtly reinstate that trust.
3) Volkswagen (again)
If the Volkswagen Summer of Love ad made me smile softly and put on Abbey Road, this one made me laugh out loud. It’s funny, it made me stop and watch and it’s a clever way to advertise a specific feature of the car. When the ads are this good, I’m not even mad they had more than one ad in the span of one awards show.
4) New York Times
A night where the Hollywood Foreign Press Association continually hammered home that we live in a time where the media is being attacked was the perfect night to air this ad. I had already seen it on my social media, but this was an excellent time to air it on television.
The timing was about as perfect as McDonald’s. The viewers were pumped up with the activism from The Golden Globes and everyone was ready to talk politics – especially about women’s rights and freedom of the press. An excellent and strategically placed spot on the Times’ part.
5) Apple Watch
Again, I know – this ad campaign has been airing for a while now. And while this ad wasn’t as phenomenal as the rest of them, it still gets a spot on the list because it’s worth talking about.
Wearable tech sales have slipped and Apple’s vision of an iWatch on everyone’s wrist is pretty much a pipe dream at this point. This is an interesting marketing approach from Apple. Instead of advertising the traditional way and promoting the Apple Watch as a lifestyle product that makes daily tasks easier, they chose to portray it as something of a medical device – all while stating in their disclaimers that the Apple Watch is definitely NOT a medical device.
Whether it worked remains to be seen – but it’s an interesting way to advertise wearable tech in an era where Apple is scrambling to up its sales.
Did you have a favorite ad? Or did you just want to talk about Oprah’s acceptance speech? Let us know what you think!
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